


A Childish Hope

by Scifi_gk



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 13:14:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15752418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scifi_gk/pseuds/Scifi_gk
Summary: After the events of Ian Garvey and its fall out, Raymond Reddington struggles to remain steadfast in his belief that Elizabeth will recover, especially considering the fact that he's been down this road once before. Ho-boy, this is heavy angst, people. Consider yourself warned.





	A Childish Hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jamie_Moriarty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jamie_Moriarty/gifts).



> Written for Jamie_Moriarty for 2018's Blacklist-exchange. Jeez, hon, I wanted something light and Josephine related and then THIS angst-fest happened. I'm sorry. I hope you like it anyway...?

The view out the window was peaceful and lovely, a total contrast to the emotions running rampant behind the facade that was Raymond Reddington. The spring sun washed the park-like grounds of the safe-house backyard in warmth, finally fully revealing the grass. Though yellowed after the long, difficult winter, it hadn’t stopped Agnes from digging in and running Dembe and Maria back and forth after her now that the weather had turned. Her laughter was evident from her expression but it was much too far for Raymond to hear it up on the second floor behind the closed window.  
  
When Agnes paused for a moment and looked up at the window to wave, Red forced a smile and waved back, then pantomimed covering his mouth in shock and pointed behind her at Dembe who was almost within grabbing distance. She immediately dropped, rolled, squirming through his legs, and was off like a shot out the other side, all gawky limbs and belly laughter.  
  
Dembe pinned him with a glare as if to say “I almost had her” and Red gave an exaggerated shrug, holding his hands out in a way that clearly conveyed a “what can you do?” attitude, an innocent grin pasted on his face. Dembe shook his head, wisely not buying the innocent act, and turned back after Agnes. The minute he did Red’s grin dropped and he sidestepped out of view.  
  
In a rare show of vulnerability, Red closed his eyes, let his shoulders droop and bowed his head, pressing his forehead to the wall. If anyone was around he would’ve foregone the indulgence and stiffened his spine, adjusting his expression and attitude on the fly, a trick he had mastered over the years which had served him well.  
  
But he was alone.  
  
_Well, technically, not completely alone_ , he thought.  
  
He swallowed the hard lump in his throat and modulated his breathing to the pace of the ventilator which, today, was the only sound in the room behind him.  
  
Quish…In.  
  
Shooo…Out.  
  
He focused on controlling his breathing until he was able to choke down the lump and turn to face the silent, still form of his beloved Lizzy. He slid into the armchair Dembe had insisted on once he realized Red wouldn’t be leaving her side for anything short of necessity, which included exactly two things: whatever needed to be done to protect themselves, and whatever needed to be done to care for Agnes.  
  
His gaze drifted down to the pale hand, lying limp on the blanket and he wrestled with his impulse, losing the battle after only a brief struggle. He scooted forward in his chair and reached out, gently lifting her lax hand, holding it between both of his and pressing his cheek against the back of her fingers. After a moment he shifted his grip, nuzzling his face into her open palm and pressing it against his left cheek, a mockery of a caress she never actually gave him when in control of her own body but one he longed for none the less.  
  
The first week after the attack, hopes were high, everyone so damned grateful she had survived the surgery after the loss of Tom. But as the swelling in her brain went down and the weeks wore on without her waking, those hopes seemed to evaporate in everyone but Red.  
  
Fools, all of them. They didn’t know what it was to stay the course.  
  
But Red did.  
  
By the fourth week, when the doctors in that abysmal hospital had tried to make their pronouncement that the odds of Lizzy waking up whole, of making a full recovery were statistically very low, Red had silenced them with a killing glare. He didn’t care about statistics when it came to Lizzy. She was strong and stubborn and she would beat this. She just needed the proper motivation.  
  
Once upon a time he had declared to the FBI that he never slept in the same place twice, a slight exaggeration he established as much to annoy Ressler as to layer in a little more lore for the Reddington mystique, but times had changed. Thanks to Harold Cooper’s meddling when he thought the task force was going to be disbanded and jailed, everyone believed Red was Elizabeth’s next of kin and nobody even blinked when he capitalized on that and finalized the transfer of her and Agnes to this carefully prepared private, and well-guarded, estate.  
  
And here they remained, months later.  
  
With a full medical staff to care for Lizzy in this more serene and charming environment, he was sure she would fight to come back. If not for him, then at least for Agnes. To that purpose, great pains had been taken to hide the IV tubing that fed nutrients and fluids to Lizzy’s body so as not to upset Agnes when she came to visit.  
  
There was no hiding the breathing tubes, though, and he spent many hours those first few weeks getting the little girl accustomed to seeing her mother in the apparatus without being frightened by it. With Agnes in his lap, they read to her and talked to her and held her hand, accompanied by the ever-present shooshing of that ventilator.  
  
Red, himself, had a love/hate relationship with the horrible machine. He loved that it did its job and continued to push air into and out of Elizabeth’s lungs, giving her life-saving oxygen and him a modicum of hope that she was not completely lost to him. He hated that it was necessary.  
  
The guilt ate at him. And the anger. But the anger didn’t belong at her bedside so he pushed it away. The guilt he buried, wrapping it up and storing it away to unpack in the long, terrible nights as was his custom.  
  
Today, however, he had no room for guilt or anger because he was full to the brim with something he very rarely allowed a foothold: crushing despair. This morning that sweet, laughing little girl currently running Dembe and Maria ragged had crawled in his lap with the most serious look she could muster on her tiny cherubic face and asked him why he spent so much time reading and talking to her mommy when he didn’t really love her.  
Silence had descended in the wake of her words, though Red wasn’t sure if it was true silence or simply the ringing in his own ears from the innocent blow the child had landed until he looked up to find Dembe and Maria as wide-eyed and breathless as him.  
  
Unable to form words, Dembe had come to his rescue, knelt beside them, and asked why she would say such a thing when she knew that Biga, her name for Red, loved her mommy. Her face scrunched up in adorable but heartbreaking confusion before she asked why, if that was true, he hadn’t just kissed her awake like the other princes did for their sleeping princesses?  
  
Red was sure someone said something in response before ushering her away but he hadn’t a clue what it was. The one thought that kept rolling around in his head, that wanted to burst forth from his lips was that he was no prince and there was no magic in his kiss, so it was probably a good thing Agnes was properly distracted before he regained the use of his vocal chords.  
  
His heart, however, was left in tatters, his stubborn belief in Liz’s recovery equally as bruised.  
  
For months now, he pressed on every day, confident, refusing the sad eyes of those who thought they understood, Aram, Samar, Harold, even a wordless Ressler, refusing to accept the first, second, or third diagnosis, that the longer Lizzy languished in this coma, the less the odds of her recovering.  
  
He wasn’t a fool. After all, it wasn’t as if he was unfamiliar with this situation.  
  
_A flash of chocolate brown eyes, gentle hands, a soft smile. A sultry laugh as she pressed close on the Jazz club’s dance floor. Soft sighs in the darkness of the private suite they stole away to. A frantic voice, quavering in fear, begging for his help, his protection. Blood, blood and silence, and the dimming of her brilliance. Years of visits. Shelves of figurines. Brief moments of brightness in her eyes followed by silent tears and longer and longer stretches of blankness until finally she was just…gone._  
  
He violently rejected that fate for Lizzy. He swore, at least to himself, that wouldn’t be the end of her story. He wouldn’t accept it. He wouldn’t allow it. He would pull her through if he had to sell his own worthless soul to do it. After all, deals with the devil were his specialty.  
  
So, during the difficult months that followed, whenever those memories snuck up on him he gritted his teeth, offered a silent apology to that beautiful creature, then purposely and ruthlessly quashed them. He did have a measure of righteousness, knowing, that with the death of Alistair Pitt, he had managed to give Josephine some justice, as flawed as it was.  
  
But that thinking, that satisfaction only worked while he was awake.  
  
Whenever he slept and his iron control slipped, the parallels between how he found Lizzy and how he had found Josephine all those years ago tormented him. Some nights he even found himself back in the house in Tacoma Park, no bodies but blood, blood everywhere, on the walls, the stairs, the banister, the floors, soaking into the knees of his trousers. When he woke, gasping for breath, biting back a wounded animal-like cry of anguish, he would lift his hands, certain they would be coated in all of their blood, only to find them clean but trembling.  
  
As he pressed his cheek into Lizzy’s palm he fought the urge to give in, to not foster such a childish hope but he couldn’t help himself and turned his head to kiss the palm of her hand as he had once before when he thought he’d lost her. He kept his eyes glued to her face, breathless with the desire that he could compel her waking, _that he could will it so_.  
  
But, oh, how painfully clear it had been made to him that he was no Prince Charming. His status hadn’t protected his family. His kisses hadn’t woken Josephine.  
  
And Lizzy continued to sleep on.


End file.
